Nvidia Sues Samsung, Qualcomm

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Nvidia filed its first two patent infringement suits, going after Samsung tablets and smartphones and the Qualcomm and Samsung chips inside them. With the suits against its largest potential customer and its biggest competitor in mobile, Nvidia is turning up the heat on its emerging licensing strategy launched about two years ago.

No. 7,015,913 Method and Apparatus for Multithreaded Processing of Data in a Programmable Graphics Processor

No. 6,697,063 Rendering Pipeline

Nvidia claims it has 7,000 granted or pending patents. The seven chosen represent "patents we have high confidence read on their products," said Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's chief executive in a call with financial analysts.

Samsung products included in the suits are the Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S4 mobile phones, Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Note Pro, and Galaxy Tab 2 tablets. Most of the devices use Qualcomm mobile processors, including the Snapdragon S4, 400, 600, 800, 801, and 805. Others are powered by Samsung Exynos mobile chips, which use ARM's Mali and Imagination Technologies' PowerVR GPU cores. ARM and Imagination were not named in the suits.

Nvidia did not specify in the suits the amount of damages it is seeking. In the conference call, Huang did not reveal the amount Nvidia sought from Samsung in licensing fees, but he did describe the talks in broad terms:

We've been in discussions with [Samsung] a couple years because given [their systems] include all three GPU architectures available outside ourselves.

We made no progress, and they put no real offer on the table. We spent a lot of time with them and made every effort to have a negotiated outcome. When you have been using technology for free for a while its hard to sign a large, significant licensing agreement.

After working on it a couple years we decided we were not making more progress.

Samsung and Qualcomm declined to comment on the suits.

"The suits come at a time when Nvidia is making small strides to revive a mobile business that has been under pressure. Nvidia's Tegra line has rebounded from the bottom and is growing, but this suit seems to have little to due with Tegra, other than Samsung is not using Tegra processors in any product," said Kevin Krewell, principal with market watcher Tirias Research.

An Nvidia representative said it expects the ITC to determine within 30 days whether to open an investigation. If it does a trial could come in mid-2015 with a decision following within a few months. The Delware court will set a date within 90 days for a trial that may not begin for two or three years, she said.

Apple filed two patent infringement cases against Samsung that led to high-profile jury trials in Silicon Valley. In initial judgments in 2012, it won about a third of the $2.71 billion it sought in the first case, but it won little more than 5% of the $2.191 it sought in a 2014 case.

>> Samsung and Qualcomm have way many more patents so they hit Nvidia back...at the end they will settle as always...so why start?

You start because you have products in production that will violate the competitor's patents. If you go ahead and sue first, you can sleep in the night knowing you do not have to hide the infringement as settlements will make everyone forget the problems.

Probably, but audit checks in a technical company may or may be done by the government or a third party that reports directly to the government (which sets rules and laws and standards for a company to be working on their soil) and if the word comes around that similar patents are being held by the company that is suing, then it would be in grave trouble as the case would bounce back against them.

>> and if the word comes around that similar patents are being held by the company that is suing, then it would be in grave trouble as the case would bounce back against them.

I think today the most important value of patents is not necessarily to go on offense but to defend yourself especially if your firm is successful. Personally, I think everyone is violating everyone. It all comes down to what do I gain or lose by suing this person. Apple went after Samsung on Android instead of Google that owns Android. It tells you something,

Practically, when a company has decent patent porfolios, it never works. The only time patents work is when there are startups in the mix. When you sue them, they may not have anything to fight back. They either allow you to acquire them or they go under. When the firms are big, it is nothing but a way to make the attorneys earn their pays.

Your assumption is that Nvidia would be in violation of those patents and that those violations would exceed the value of Nvidia's claims on their patents.

Those are wrong assumptions.

Nvidia has both internal and external lawyers who are versed in patent and IP so they would have taken a good look at what if any counter suits could be brought and what the potential cost of those would be and determined that defending Nvidia's patents and IP would be to their best advantage.

Most companies license patents or do so when offered data showing that they need to.

Nvidia for one pays Qualcomm royalties on their Icera modems.

Samsung and Qualcomm don't seem to think they should pay at all and plan to continuing to use Nvidia's IP for free.

After two years of "kicking the can" and "pointing fingers" Nvidia decided enough is enough.

If they set another precident of samsung and Qualcomm settling and cross licenseing, then that opens the doors for Nvidia to go after ARM & IMG's other GPU licensees. This would include Sony for PSP2, Mediatek for the 100Ms of chips they are shipping a year with Mali/PowerVr and the countless other licensees that the two companies have. Most of whom have little or no IP portfolio with which to fight back.

Interesting move for Nvidia to indirectly attack ARM, a company they are totally reliant on for their entire Tegra line of Socs.

Although NVIDIA's Tegra line is not being used by samsung but by Microsoft, they have had given plenty of warnings to Samsung about misusing their products, reverse engineering them to have free usage. NVIDIA's case holds water, but they may not have the full advantage of winning the case completely if it goes into a court of justice.